Ross William Hamilton/The OregonianThese days are supposed to be the easy ones for former City Commissioner Mike Lindberg. Instead, he's lost a child, suffered a debilitating and mysterious illness and taken in a troubled teen-ager.

Sitting on the couch together, Mike Lindberg and his 14-year-old granddaughter, Caitlin Kelly, look the picture of domestic tranquility.

He's propped his bare feet on the coffee table. She leans her head against his shoulder and gives him a hard time.

"Eeeeeeew," she says, looking at his toes. "Those are disgusting."

"She loves me," he says, beaming and removing his feet. "Can't you tell?"

Not so many months ago, Caitlin essentially lived on the streets, barely a teenager but already an addict. Lindberg, a former Portland City Council member, suffered a mystery illness that left him unable to walk or help.

And Lisa, his daughter and her mother, was dying from liver failure, a long, slow decline after a long battle with alcoholism.

At 68, an age when his friends are setting off on grand retirement adventures, Lindberg is digging in for a second chance as a parent — a second chance that can go through a case of Vitamin Water a week, lusts after bad boys and fictional vampires and occasionally stuns him with her self-awareness.

"I feel kind of happy now," she says. "I feel almost like a normal girl."

As she talks, he unconsciously slips his feet back on the coffee table. She rolls her eyes and lets him have it: "Graaaaaandpaaaaaa!"

A few feet away from the couch where Lindberg and his granddaughter sit, the fireplace mantel holds a framed picture of Lindberg's 1979 City Council swearing in.

He's a little less rumpled than usual in it, smiling as he pushes up his oversized glasses. Lisa, 15 at the time, sits next to him in her fancy dress, grinning an open and excited smile as she awaits her dad's big moment.

Courtesy of Lindberg family/1979Portland City Council members selected Mike Lindberg, a protege of former Mayor Neil Goldschmidt, to fill a vacant seat in 1979. Lindberg loved the work and the social life that came with it, but his busy schedule pulled him away from Lisa and her brothers.

Lindberg was never a household name, but the list of projects he touched during his 17 years in office reads like a rundown of modern Portland: the Salmon Street fountain, the Portland Center for the Performing Arts, the redevelopment of Waterfront Park, the East Side Esplanade, the Springwater Corridor, protections for the region's water supply and a plethora of parks programs.

Lindberg is a big, cheerful guy whose pale skin suggests his North Atlantic ancestry. He can be dorky, loud and less than smooth. He was, however, perfect for Portland in the late 1970s and '80s, an unapologetic bleeding-heart liberal and land-use wonk who believed government really could solve society's problems.

Those were wilder times. Lindberg's first marriage ended just before he took office, and he packed his nights with neighborhood meetings, charity banquets and bull sessions with colleagues. His house was party central; Lindberg once had to warn friends to hide their marijuana because the police chief had just arrived.

He didn't abandon his children, twin boys and Lisa. He also wasn't the father he could have been.

"I was an every-other-weekend kind of dad," he says.

A year or so after he took office, Lisa ran away. During the next few years she moved from house to house and man to man. She drank too much, did drugs, would put her life back together — getting her GED, for example — and then fall off the wagon and into trouble.

Lisa was a sweet kid, friends and family members say, smart, artistic and social like her father. During good periods, she tagged along with Lindberg to campaign fundraisers and City Hall parties. During bad times, she called from jail or the hospital, begging him to use his connections to get her out.

He tried to help, guiding her to rehab clinics and psychiatrists, though he acknowledges that sometimes his own busy schedule got in the way. Ten years ago, doctors diagnosed her with hepatitis C. Earlier in life, Lindberg says, Lisa had been a "recreational alcoholic." Later, she used the booze to numb mounting physical pain.

She died on July 13, 2007, at age 43.

Lindberg has never been very good at slowing down.

Like his daughter, he's a social beast, addicted in his own way to being part of the process, to being a player, to knowing the story behind the story. The pages of his big appointment book are covered in black ink, almost every hour occupied. Asked what he's done since retiring from office in 1997, he presents a handwritten list of two dozen charities, government agencies and cultural organizations he has helped.

Mike Lindberg

Age: 68

Who he is: The longest serving city commissioner in the past 40 years, serving from 1979 through 1996; now a lobbyist, unpaid political consultant and frequent fundraiser for various nonprofits and arts organizations.

Career path: Lindberg earned an economics degree at the University of Oregon, where he served in student government with Neil Goldschmidt, but took a roundabout route to City Hall. In the mid-1970s, he was working in the private sector when he saw a newspaper story about the departure of a City Council aide. He thought the job sounded interesting and applied. He wound up heading the public works and planning departments before City Council members appointed him to fill a vacancy.

Sometimes, however, the body tells you it's time to stop.

For a few years now, he's been writing a book about unusual Oregonians. On his way back from a writing conference at the coast in April 2006, his feet started to burn.

It felt like being stabbed in the foot over and over again. Within a few weeks, he couldn't walk more than a dozen steps without sitting.

Doctors were baffled. His symptoms seemed similar to Lou Gehrig's disease, or maybe Lyme disease. A city crew came out to test his water for arsenic or mercury.

"I had myself dead and buried, my memorial service planned, a couple dozen times," he says.

After months of mystery, physicians at Oregon Health & Science University diagnosed peripheral neuropathy, a disorder in which damaged nerves send false messages to the brain. It's incurable but not deadly. Today, his schedule includes regular trips to a physician, a shrink, an acupuncturist, a naturopath and a masseuse.

In the best moments he's resumed something of his old life — traveling, lobbying and advising would-be politicians. In the worst, he can't walk. He sits around with his socks off and his pale feet propped up to relieve the pain.

Caitlin hates that.

They're back on the couch, grandfather and granddaughter. Lindberg doesn't look that different from the picture at his swearing in. He's a little plumper, maybe, a little thinner up top. He's still grinning. Caitlin's hair is darker than her mother's, but she's got the same round face, the same open eyes.

Even before Lisa died, Caitlin was in trouble, skipping school and staying out all night. Caitlin dealt with her grief about her mother — both during the slow progression of her illness and after her death — by spending more and more time away from home with friends. They hung out at Pioneer Courthouse Square a lot, drank as much as they could find — beer, tequila and Green Apple Smirnoff were her favorites — and took an assortment of drugs.

"I wasn't getting the most attentive parenting, if you know what I mean," she says. "I was kind of running wild, I guess you'd say."

Ross William Hamilton/The Oregonian"When I got here, I was really angry," Caitlyn, getting ready for a social function for foster kids, says of her grandfather's house. "I was mad at my mom for dying and being stupid and drinking so much. I was mad at my grandpa for not doing anything to stop her. I'm still mad sometimes, but I'm working on it."

Two months after Lisa died, Caitlin's father landed in legal trouble — she asked that the details stay out of the newspaper — that cost him custody rights. When police showed up at her father's house, other family members became responsible for Caitlin.

The first few months did not go well. She was angry, sad and eager to continue her life of drinking, partying and forgetting.

During a therapy session last February, she asked for a bathroom break. But instead of the ladies' room, she hustled out of the building. Lindberg, fed up, called the police. Three days later, officers picked her up and slapped her in handcuffs. She spent three months in mental health clinics before being released to the care of her grandfather and a family friend, Floretta Shadel.

In the past nine months, they've helped her rebuild her life. She's seen therapists and doctors, dentists and social workers. She's still bitter at times toward her both mother and her grandfather. She still lashes out at him sometimes in therapy: "You could have saved her. Where were you?"

They have explicit conversations about sex, drugs and the realities of her former life. She's somewhere in between child and adult, 14 going on 40 going on 5.

"God, I miss ecstasy," she says one afternoon, sprawled out on the couch like a cat in the sun while Lindberg fixes a snack in the kitchen. "When you were taking that stuff, you couldn't feel any pain. Everything seemed easy."

Her voice bubbles, then drops, serious again: "I was somewhat addicted to drinking."

Lindberg and his third wife, Carolyn, agreed early in their courtship that they didn't want children together. In 18 years, they've carved out a life of culture and art, eating out and traveling the world. Now they're adjusting to the realities of having a teenager in the house, one who needs even more supervision and structure than most.

"I understand what my friends say now about their houses not belonging to them anymore," Carolyn says. It's reality, not a complaint.

Lindberg has jumped through the bureaucratic hoops necessary to get permanent custody: interviews, background checks, parenting classes and home inspections. He's making other adjustments as well.

Ross William Hamilton/The OregonianLindberg and his granddaughter are learning to understand each other. She puts up with his feet. He puts up with her moods. "I think he needs me here," she says. "I think I'm good for his health."

"She wants to go see this band Friday night because one of the guys in it is cute," he says one day. "So we've got to figure out how late she can stay out, and whether she can spend the night with a friend, and how I'm going to make sure they make it home from the concert."

He shakes his head at all the details.

"This music, I just don't understand," he says. "It sounds a little like acid rock in my day. I forget the name. It's like 'Screamo,' or 'Techno,' or something like that."

The Internet and cell phones intensify the natural, hormonal drama of being young. Every crisis between Caitlin and her friends is more immediate. He's learned to double-check her MySpace page for anything inappropriate and not to respond with too much grandfatherly disapproval when she curses. She's recited the plots of Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" novels for him multiple times, and he's returned the favor by introducing her to Jane Austen, albeit the film versions.

"I finally feel just like any other teenager," she says. "Well, not just like. I don't have a mom and a dad. Well, I have a dad, but I'm not allowed to talk to him. So I'm not just like any other teenager."

Earlier this month, Lindberg won the right to serve as her foster parent until she's old enough to leave home. He's thrilled and vaguely terrified.

Raising a teenager is hard enough when you're young and healthy, and he didn't do such a great job the first time. Caitlin is a pistol, sweet yet moody, tempted by that old lifestyle and always pushing for more freedom. Addiction runs in the family.

"Those friends still call," Lindberg says. "'Somebody has 'shrooms at Pioneer Courthouse Square. Somebody has this drug. Somebody is home alone.' She's going to require counseling and support for a long, long time."

For now, it's working. They're back on the couch together one afternoon after class. He's bragging about her academic performance — she's carrying a B average at Open Meadows, and she's working to persuade him to let her get a pedicure as a reward.

He suggests they go together.

"That sounds cool, but also kind of gross," she says, scrunching her nose. "Nobody wants to see their grandfather's feet."

She's looking, pointedly, at his naked toes, which are once more propped up on the coffee table to relieve the ache. He grins. She rolls her eyes again.

For her, he puts his socks on. It's a compromise, this parenting stuff.